


The Questions of One’s Self

by Imshookandbi



Series: The Tales of a Mockingbird [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: All those jokes about Mari being adopted by the Waynes come tru, Implied Class Salt, Implied Lila and Class Sugar, Implied Tom and Sabine Salt, Implied child negelct, Its implied that they get better, It’s mild anyways, No Romance, implied found family, thats it thats why the found family tag, the fic itself is very poem-y ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24706555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imshookandbi/pseuds/Imshookandbi
Summary: Marinette questions a few things, and wonders about the choice of man.
Relationships: Marinette Dupain-Cheng & Batfamily Members (Mentioned)
Series: The Tales of a Mockingbird [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1786213
Comments: 21
Kudos: 518





	1. Is This A Choice?

**Author's Note:**

> Based off an au in the maribat discord called the ‘Mockingbird au’, basically, Marinette and Adrien have been fighting Papillon since they were ten and when they’re sixteen, they visit Gotham for a month.
> 
> Marinette gets flighty and paranoid if she can’t patrol so she crafts a supposedly temporary identity as a vigilante called ‘Mockingbird’ and every night or so she goes out for a few hours AS Mockingbird to save people.
> 
> Few facts on Mockingbird:  
> 1) her color scheme is pale blue, pale grey, and white  
> 2) she isn’t using a miraculi bc they’ve basically given her PTSD/are the problems relating directly to her trauma and she doesn’t WANT to use more than she has to, so her outfit is entirely handmade and No, not perfect or offering much protection  
> 3) She pretends to speak minimal english as Mockingbird so people can’t recognize her voice as much as possible  
> 4) She optimized her stealth to 100 as Mockingbird  
> 5) she uses a slingshot and marbles to take down her enemies
> 
> And, finally
> 
> 6) everyone thinks she’s Batman’s newest kid, everyone except Batman seems to get the memo. Including his kids, who find it hilarious
> 
> Also I have a timeline for ages:  
> Mari - 16  
> Bruce - 37  
> Tim - 20  
> Cassandra - 22  
> Stephanie - 21  
> Damian - 11  
> Jason - 24  
> Dick - 29  
> Babs - 30

**This is my choice**. Marinette thinks as she dons the Creation Earrings once again to defeat her first villain— an akuma called Stoneheart, her classmate. It’s funny, she doesn’t realize how she herself will have to create a stone heart to be a hero. She forces herself to smile, but she knows its too weak. _I always told Maman I wanted to be a hero._

**This is my choice.** Marinette thinks again, it’s been two years since she became Ladybird and she’s tired. She’s started training with grand-mère, who’s visits have become frequent again, she wanted her granddaughter to know how to defend herself. It’s helpful, Marinette knows how to take down a man by pinching the right nerve endings or by hitting the correct pressure points. There’s a part of her that wished she didn’t _have_ to know.

**This is my choice.** Marinette thinks. She’s fourteen, and there’s a new student called Delilah Rossi in her class, she’s a _liar,_ and Marinette can’t believe her fellow classmates can believe what the witch is spewing out her mouth. It’s Marinette’s choice to be Ladybird, just as it’s her choice to stand against Lila as she leads her classmates astray.

**This is my choice.** Marinette thinks bitterly, she’s 15 and she’s moving her stuff into an old studio loft in the abandoned part of town. She can’t stay at the bakery anymore— too dangerous, too unsafe. She’s the Guardian now, she has been for a few months. The stress is piling up on her, she’s Marinette and MDC, but she’s also Ladybird, and now she’s the Guardian. Marinette isn’t too sure who she is anymore. 

Her parents won’t notice she’s gone, either way.

**This is my choice.** Marinette thinks as she dons a new mask— the Mockingbird mask. She’s sixteen, and her class is in Gotham for the month. She supposes she got lucky, Gabriel Agreste was on a business trip for two months starting the day her class left. So she doesn’t have to worry about any akuma. Her classmates have moved on from Lila’s lies, the girl herself has been getting better everyday. But Marinette can’t forget how quickly they turned on her, _her,_ the girl they’ve known for much longer than the Italian. Friendship runs deep, but betrayal runs deeper, and Marinette knows that this kind of hurt is a scar that doesn’t want to heal.

_**This wasn’t my choice!** _Marinette cries, she’s still sixteen, but she’s Ladybird and Mockingbird and the Guardian and Marinette and MDC as well. She’s a hero, a vigilante, a protector, a fashion designer, and a school girl all at once. She doesn’t know who she is, not exactly, but what she does know is that she’s wrapped in the arms of the Gotham vigilantes as they allow her to cry out against everything she’s gone through in the last six years without judgement. For the first time since she was ten, Marinette feels safe.

_**This is my choice.**_ Marinette smiles as she leaves the courtroom. After a long battle, custody has finally been transferred over to the Wayne Family— _her_ family. They’re vigilantes— heroes, like she is, and they’ll be with her every step of the way as she finds herself again. She was Mockingbird, after all. But she was also a Wayne, that came first.


	2. The Wonders of Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some of the boys reflect on Marinette, specifically, who is she? 
> 
> Cass seems to have the answer.

**Who is she?** Dick wonders. Bruce asked him to lead the tour of the Wayne building today for the visiting French class, and he was all too happy to oblige, but now he can’t seem to take his eyes off the small, dark-haired girl in the back of the group. He’s never seen someone try and make themselves look so small, she’s so tense, every time they pass someone its like she expects them to attack. It makes his heart sink, _’What has she gone through?’_

**Who is she?** Jason thinks. He doesn’t recognize the volunteer at the end of the line, but she looks like she could be one of his siblings. It doesn’t help that there’s a haunted look in her eye, even if the smile she gives is sweeter than honey. He’s told that she’s one of the visiting students from Paris, and he can’t help but wonder what the fuck is going on in the City of Love for a child to look so scared. _‘She’d fit right in with the rest of us,’_ He thinks humorlessly as he takes a spot next to her. He tries to ignore how her shoulders hunch and tense before they’re forcibly relaxed.

**Who is she?** Tim questions. Try as she might, but the girl across from him couldn’t hide how her fingers tapped nervously against the wooden table nor how she always seemed to freeze when someone walked by. He has so many questions, but he knows that playing 20 questions in a busy cafe in the middle of Gotham proper was no way to get himself acquainted or endeared to his new coffee sibling. _’At least she has good taste,’_ He muses silently and pushes his questions away for a later date, he wants to get to know his new sibling better before Bruce finds her.

**Who is she?** Damian wants to know, the teen girl was nice, but he’s been trained for years to recognize body language and the one before him was the one of a fighter— a fighter who never wanted to, but had to anyways. She was ready and anticipating an attack before it even came, always aware of her surroundings. Like him. _’If father decides to keep this one, I wouldn’t mind,’_ He thinks, and allows himself to be dragged off to McDonald’s for something called a ‘Happy Meal’.

**Who is she?** Bruce worries, because he recognizes himself in the girl. He recognizes her soft edges turned sharp through force and hardships, and he recognizes the eyes of a child who lost their innocence far too soon than they should’ve. She reminds him of Damian, and that scares him. It scares him because no child should be forced to endure the same thing his son did, and she has the eyes of a child soldier. _’Who is she?’_ He wonders as the girl is dragged back to her class, her shoulders hunched and her head bowed low, as if she doesn’t want to be seen.

_**She is one of us,**_ Cass signs in the light of the Batcave, a de-masked Mockingbird wrapped in the arms of her brothers as she cries. _**She is one of us, and she will never be alone again.**_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [What Comes Next](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28487040) by [jumpingjoy82](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jumpingjoy82/pseuds/jumpingjoy82)




End file.
